Prediction: This NCAA Tournament Will Keep Being Bonkers

We’re a week into this year’s NCAA Tournament, and we’ve already seen crazy comebacks and upsets, games that hinged on the outcome of a single shot (make and miss), and wins from teams seeded Nos. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15. A case has been made that it was the greatest start to an NCAA tourney ever, which isn’t ridiculous.

But that’s just the run to the Sweet 16. As for championship odds, has anything really changed since Selection Sunday?

We knew going in that this was a notably wide-open college basketball season with no clear favorite. And despite the tournament’s wild start, the odds have barely moved in any team’s favor. Kansas began as the favorite according to our prediction model, with a 19 percent probability of winning it all; it remains the favorite, at 21 percent. No team has seen its title chances boosted by more than a handful of percentage points; North Carolina has enjoyed the biggest bump, from 15 percent to 19 percent.

In other words, we haven’t learned much about how this whole thing is going to shake out — and that’s probably for the best if exciting basketball is what we want.

According to our Elo ratings, Kansas is the strongest team remaining in this year’s tournament. (Elo ratings, which we’re fond of using acrossmanysports, help estimate a team’s strength at any given moment.) But among Sweet 16 field leaders since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, its rating is seventh-weakest. Meanwhile, Notre Dame, the worst of the teams still in the tournament by Elo, is the sixth-strongest team to hold that distinction since ’85. The result is a balanced crop of Sweet 16 entrants, with the fourth-smallest spread between best and worst out of the past 32 tournaments.

BEST REMAINING TEAM

WORST REMAINING TEAM

YEAR

SEED

TEAM

ELO

SEED

TEAM

ELO

DIFF.

2010

1

Duke

2075

12

Cornell

1878

197

1994

1

Purdue

2047

12

Tulsa

1822

225

1990

1

Michigan State

2056

12

Ball State

1825

232

2016

1

Kansas

2108

6

Notre Dame

1867

241

2009

1

North Carolina

2113

12

Arizona

1870

242

2011

1

Ohio State

2130

5

Arizona

1876

255

2005

1

Illinois

2137

6

Texas Tech

1873

265

1996

1

Connecticut

2144

12

Arkansas

1878

266

2006

1

Connecticut

2114

11

George Mason

1844

270

1995

1

Kentucky

2124

6

Memphis

1849

275

2004

3

Pittsburgh

2123

9

UAB

1847

276

2007

1

North Carolina

2106

5

Butler

1828

279

2014

1

Florida

2100

11

Dayton

1820

280

1989

1

Arizona

2127

11

Minnesota

1838

289

1993

1

North Carolina

2156

12

George Washington

1848

308

2015

1

Kentucky

2165

11

UCLA

1852

312

2001

1

Duke

2153

10

Georgetown

1830

323

2012

1

Kentucky

2118

10

Xavier

1783

334

1988

1

Temple

2079

13

Richmond

1743

336

2008

1

North Carolina

2152

12

Western Kentucky

1810

342

2003

1

Kentucky

2155

10

Auburn

1811

344

1987

1

North Carolina

2145

12

Wyoming

1797

348

1985

1

Georgetown

2143

11

Boston College

1789

354

2000

1

Duke

2164

10

Seton Hall

1805

359

1991

1

UNLV

2192

10

Temple

1822

370

2013

1

Louisville

2135

15

Florida Gulf Coast

1754

381

1986

1

Duke

2127

12

DePaul

1745

382

2002

1

Duke

2198

11

Southern Illinois

1783

415

1992

1

Duke

2213

12

New Mexico State

1790

423

1999

1

Duke

2299

10

Purdue

1834

464

1998

1

Arizona

2170

13

Valparaiso

1700

470

1997

1

Kansas

2201

14

Chattanooga

1709

492

A balanced Sweet 16

Source: Sports Reference

Much ink has been spilled lamenting the lack of Cinderellas in this Sweet 16, and that’s a fair assessment. Gonzaga, No. 11 in the Midwest, is the lowest-seeded team left, and it’s far better than the typical 11-seed. (We thought they played more like a No. 6 seed during the season.) If Syracuse and Notre Dame — two of the nine winningest schools in Division I history — are your best Cinderella candidates, it’s probably a down year for heartwarming underdogs.

Even so, we should appreciate the evenness of this Sweet 16 field. Almost all the remaining teams were among the best in the country during the regular season: 12 of them ranked in the top 20 nationally according to our pre-tournament mix of computer ratings, with Gonzaga checking in at No. 21. (Wisconsin ranked 29th, Notre Dame 33rd and Syracuse 35th.)

That’s a competitive group, and it should make for riveting basketball. My research indicates that the single best predictor of our excitement index stat — an attempt to quantify a game’s thrills by tracking its average change in win probability per basket — is how closely matched the two opponents are in a power rating like Ken Pomeroy’s or Elo.

Given the composition of this Sweet 16 field, we’re going to get a lot of those close matchups over the rest of the tournament. And if all goes according to the numbers, that should mean the excitement of March Madness is just getting started.